Why “Moving to the Center” Will Not Work

“Both parties need to move toward the center. There’s too much extremism today.”

Reasonable people often say this. They’re reasonable, but they’re still wrong. Why?

The “center” implies the center OF something. It implies a point between two extremes, or positions.

What are those positions? In politics, the basic positions are individual rights versus the state. Republicans — with huge contradictions — more or less represent the individual rights side. Democrats — with almost no contradictions, anymore — represent the all-powerful, all-knowing State.

The Democrats have moved us more and more left with each passing generation. First it was Social Security. Then Medicare. Then federalized education, state-run lending, Obamacare and a state-run environment. Socialism and collectivism have become the dominant themes of American government, even if the people remain a bit more individualistic than not.

If we hold “the center” as a value, then that center point keeps going more and more left. Now the left calls for repealing the Second Amendment and ignoring the First Amendment when it comes to criminalizing government-defined “hate speech”. Once these two things happen, if they do, we are in a dictatorship.

There is no “center” or compromise with a dictatorship. And because that’s pretty much what Democrats now call for, there’s no way of responding to them with a “centrist” position. There’s nothing whatsoever centrist about Democrats, especially anymore. If lovers of individualism and freedom compromise with them, we’ll seal our fate.

To say you’re taking the “center” of any argument means you’re refusing to take a position. It’s a willful choice to put your head in the sand. You don’t want to think of it that way, but that’s still what it is.

In matters of principle, you have to take a stand. Either you’re in favor of the First and Second Amendments — the right to decide your ideas, and to protect your body — or you’re not. You don’t get to say, “Well, I’m not really for or against either of those things; I’m in the center” and then have others call you reasonable. It doesn’t work that way, because that’s not how reality is.

America used to have two confused and internally contradictory parties. Now we have one. The other one — the Democratic Party — is looking less confused by the day. There is no center. The Democrats destroyed it.

 

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